The three faces of French terror

They burn their French passports. They call for their supposed countrymen to join them in Syria and Iraq or wreak murder and destruction at home. Now French security services are in a race to identify them.

Pictured above are three apparent French jihadis that appear in Islamic State’s latest propaganda video. The trio speak directly to camera in a seven-minute film that has surfaced hours after French authorities identified Michaël Dos Santos and Maxime Hauchard, two home-grown jihadis who came to light in last Sunday’s film that confirmed the death of American aid worker, Peter Kassig.

The video – entitled What are you waiting for? – attempts to recruit French citizens to fight in Syria and Iraq. France is thought to be Europe’s leading supplier of jihadis to the region, while President François Hollande believes some 1,000 French citizens are fighting abroad, on their way to battle, or have returned home.

The country’s Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve says 138 suspected Islamic extremists are currently under investigation, imprisoned or deradicalised inside France. At least 36 are thought to have been killed in Syria or Iraq.

But the latest video highlights that the threat appears to have intensified. Sitting with a rifle at his shoulder, a man identified in the video as Abu Osama al-Faranci attacks French Muslims for not emigrating to Syria and Iraq. “You strengthen their economy and pay taxes which they use to fight us,” he says.

Then holding a serrated sword, another identified as Abu Maryam Al Faranci, says the mujahideen will not hesitate to “chop off their heads” of non-believers while a man named in the film as Abu Salman al-Faranci says those who cannot join Isis in Syria or Iraq should “operate within France”.

“Terrorise them and do not allow them to sleep due to fear and horror,” he says detailing a range of murder methods.

Fighting back

The French have traditionally built their counter-terrorism strategy on intelligence and heavy-handed law-enforcement for which incitement carries stiff prison sentences. Recent revisions to French law prosecute anyone harbouring a basic intent to carry out terror, even if they have no association with it.

Next month the country will launch a nationwide anti-terror awareness campaign while deradicalisation teams – comprising psychologists, social workers and lawyers – are increasingly offering their services to anxious parents who suspect their children may be at risk of extremism.

But is it enough? Leaked US diplomatic cables from 2005 warned France’s prisons and poor neighbourhoods were ripe recruitment grounds for radical Islamists. Such was the fear, the cable said, that it referenced a report by French intelligence services describing radicalised French prisoners as ticking “time bombs”.

Nearly a decade on, as this latest video exemplifies, defusing that threat has never been more urgent.